By: Vinay Nalwa

Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated on 30 January 1948 at Birla Bhavan in New Delhi. Just after the assassination, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) became the target of vindictive administrative action and eventually, a long-running political narrative.

The actions taken against the RSS in 1948 must be examined in their proper historical and legal context. At the time of the assassination, MS Golwalkar, the second Sarsanghchalak(Chief Mentor) of the RSS, was in Chennai. On 31 January 1948, Golwalkar conveyed his shock and grief over Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination through formal communications to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Union Home Minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. He simultaneously instructed RSS shakhas across the country to observe a period of mourning in Gandhi’s memory. Golwalkar returned to the RSS headquarters at Nagpur (Maharashtra) on 31 January.

In Delhi, senior RSS functionaries responded promptly. The organisation’s Prant Sanghchalak (Chief Mentor of Delhi Unit) for Delhi, Lala Hansraj Gupta, along with Prant Pracharak (Full-time Worker in-charge of the state unit) Vasantrao Oke, visited Birla Bhavan and met several Congress leaders to personally convey their condolences.

In the first week of February, 1948, the RSS was banned and Golwalkar was arrested. This marked the beginning of a narrative drift, where political power was misused to impose guilt without evidence.

Nehru government had to lift the ban less than eighteen months later, after failing to substantiate its allegations. Over the time, public memory retained the existence of the ban but erased the reason for its withdrawal.

The Ban, the Arrests, and the Collapse of the Case

Following the ban, a large-scale crackdown was launched in which around 20,000 RSS swayamsevaks(volunteers) were immediately arrested. However, the government was unable to establish any involvement of the organisation in this case. By August 1948, most detainees had been released, and Golwalkar himself was freed on 5 August 1948, subject to restrictions on his movement within Nagpur. He continued corresponding with Nehru and Patel seeking removal of the ban.

Golwalkar was arrested again on the night of 12 November 1948 in Delhi and transferred to Nagpur Central Jail. In response, he called upon RSS workers to undertake a non-violent satyagraha(protest), which lasted 45 days and saw over 77,000 swayamsevaks court arrest. On 9 December 1948, the RSS formally launched its first civil disobedience movement against the Nehru government. More than 60,000 swayamsevaks participated. Over 6,500 were arrested in the Central Provinces (a 1948 administrative region covering much of today’s Madhya Pradesh and Vidarbha), and about 4,500 in the United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh) alongside participation from Maharashtra, Bengal, and Gujarat.

The satyagraha was suspended on 20 January 1949 following government-initiated negotiations. During this period, RSS leaders Eknath Ranade, PD Dani, and Balasaheb Deoras drafted a formal Constitution for the organisation. After its approval by Sardar Patel in June 1949, the ban on the RSS was lifted unconditionally on 11 July 1949, and Golwalkar was released on 13 July 1949.

Patel’s Letters: The State Knew Early

The most decisive evidence against the accusation of RSS involvement comes from the internal correspondence of the Indian government itself, particularly letters written by Home Minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.

In a letter to Jawaharlal Nehru dated 27 February 1948 (Selected Correspondence of Sardar Patel 1945–50, Vol. 2, p. 283), Patel wrote:

“I have kept myself almost in daily touch with the progress of the investigation regarding Bapu’s assassination case. I devote a large part of my evening to discussing with Sanjevi the day’s progress and giving instructions to him on any points that arise. All the main accused have given long and detailed statements of their activities. In one case, the statement extends to ninety typed pages… It also clearly emerges from these statements that the RSS was not involved in it at all.”

Patel went further. “After personally reviewing investigation reports and consulting senior officers, including the Public Prosecutor of Bombay, he observed that over 90 percent of allegations received were pure imagination, largely directed against RSS workers, and that hardly anything of substance was found beyond vague claims such as distribution of sweets or expressions of joy.”

His conclusion was unambiguous: the conspiracy behind Gandhi’s assassination was not wide, nor organisational, but restricted to a handful of men.

Arrests Without Evidence, Acquittals with Costs

Patel’s correspondence also reveals another uncomfortable truth, the large-scale arrests of RSS workers were carried out in a reckless manner, often on hearsay alone. He acknowledged that both the Central and Provincial Governments were being accused of “rounding up innocent people.”

In a letter dated May 4, 1948 (Selected Correspondence of Sardar Patel 1945-50, Vol. 2 Page 269) Sardar Patel admitted:

“The High Courts have been acquitting persons who were arrested in connection with the round-up of RSS men. In UP there have been several acquittals, in Bombay, the acquittals have been of an almost wholesale nature, and the Government has been asked to pay costs.”

 C K Daphtary, the then Advocate General, Bombay who was in charge of the prosecution did not include RSS in the controversy. The prosecution did not even hint, much less prove even the remotest connection of RSS with the murder of the Mahatma. RSS is not named or blamed anywhere in the judgement delivered in the case.

Kapur Commission

Subsequent official investigations conducted by the Government of India into the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi did not find any evidence establishing the involvement of the RSS. In 1966 the Union government set up a commission under J L Kapur, a retired judge of the Supreme Court, to make a fresh and thorough inquiry into the conspiracy that led to the murder of Gandhi. The Commission, which sat at different places and examined about 101 witnesses and 407 documents, published its reports in 1969. It nowhere blamed RSS and cleared the organisation of any connection with the crime.

Its conclusions, published in 1969, were unequivocal.

RN Banerjee, the Home Secretary at the time of Gandhi’s assassination testified. According to Kapur Commission (Vol 1), “RN Bannerjee, Secretary of the Home Ministry, stated that the R.S.S. as a body were not, in his opinion, responsible for the bomb throwing on Gandhiji or for his murder, nor did the conspirators act in their capacity as members of the RSS. Also, it has not been proved that they were members of the RSS.” (Page 167)

“He further stated that after the funeral of Mahatma Gandhi at the informal meeting of the 31st January there was a feeling that the RSS should have been banned earlier. Whether it should have been done or not was for the Cabinet to decide, but his own evidence shows that the RSS as such was not responsible for the conspiracy or the murder. The banning of that … organisation in that case would not have affected the conspirators or the course of events because they have not been proved to have been members of the RSS nor has that organisation been shown to have had a hand in the murder.”

The Commission recorded that:

• The conspirators were not proved to be members of the RSS
• The organisation was not shown to have had any hand in the murder
• Even an earlier ban on the RSS would not have altered the course of events

In Delhi as well, the Commission noted, no evidence existed that the RSS as a body was indulging in violent activities against Gandhi or Congress leaders.

“The evidence of RN Bannerjee is that the RSS as a body were not responsible for the bomb throwing or for the murder of Mahatma Gandhi nor were the conspirators acting in their capacity as members of the organisation.”

Why the Narrative Survived

Judicial proceedings, government assessments, and a commission of inquiry found no evidence linking  RSS or its leaders to the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. The allegation nevertheless persisted through repeated political assertion, seeking to establish it as truth.

(The writer is an author and columnist)